Intimacy

So weird to watch a space battle and not be in it. Like dancing without music. Fighters spun and twisted in acrobatic skill. The Rebels weren't bad, Han reflected. Just outnumbered.

Luke was out here. Damn fool. And the Princess- not a fool but something was wrong with her, what she wanted from this- was down on the moon. Luke was going to die, and she was going to die, but not Han. Not today, anyway. Not like this. A dancer without a song.

He pressed his two index fingers to his eyes and they came away wet. What the hells, he wondered. He didn't move, because he was captain. "Chewie, check environmentals," he ordered.

Space was noiseless, flameless. One instant fighters were zipping by and then the next they were broken, pieces of wreckage floating away.

Another X-Wing took a fatal hit. This one nosedived into the Death Star.

Not enough, pal, Han thought to the dead pilot. Not enough.

"It's not humid in here," Chewie argued. "You're crying."

Han scoffed. "When have you ever seen me cry?"

"The Princess's perfume, then. You're allergic to it."

"You smell it?" Han turned to Chewie, curious.

"She was sitting in your chair."

"Oh, right." But it couldn't be perfume. Unless she wore too much at the time of her capture. Pain, sweat, and neglect would surely have erased it by now. And the garbage chute. Which, now he could look back on it, was kinda nice.

She sat here, Han thought. There were signs all over his ship of those two. Luke's poncho, covering the chessboard. Han had only dumped the contents of the Princess's untouched meal he'd fixed for her in the basin. Echoes of conversations. Some needed finishing.

"We're going in, then?" Chewie asked.

Han wiped his hands on his pants and peeled on his flight gloves.

"Yeah." She was watching, from down there. "Let's set up a bank shot, huh? Two for one."

Passion

The last one was bad. Han looked up while the hangar roof shook, and chunks of ice fell into the maintenance hatch.

That would cause a short somewhere down the line, he knew. Story of his life.

Chewie shook his fist at the roof and roared, drowning out the excited voices of the men that trotted by. Han thought he heard the words command center.

He was drawn like a moth.

"I'm gonna go check," he muttered at Chewie, who didn't seem surprised and waved him away.

Inside, beams were broken and the place wrecked, but there she was, pacing back and forth between two stations, feral and trapped, the techs sitting stiff and frozen- not from the temperature this time, but from fear- and her eyes caught sight of him, embers brown and gray, and they sparked.

Yes, yes, Princess, be all pissed, Han thought. This is how you say goodbye.

She saw it too, and together they ran, through defeat and loss, and he was thinking it was to another goodbye, and what the hells had he been doing all this time?

Ice cracked and groaned, snapped; great chunks of wall and roof tumbled all around, stopping them. He threw himself at her, because when it came down to it, the Princess or the smuggler, she was the one that mattered; she was the one everyone would pick. Even him.

He covered her with his body, and he could only wait long enough until the ice quieted; the one milisecond that he had to himself to appreciate her- her size and scent and warmth and essence- it caused such an ache in him that he squeezed his eyes shut and wiped his cheek on her coat.

Commitment

What happens when you spend too long watching and waiting? You turn to stone.

Everything happened without him.

"Chewie," Han stuttered through chattering teeth. He flailed his arms at the air, trying to hit everything he couldn't see, and Chewie pinned his arms by wrapping him in a hug.

"We're breaking you out," Chewie said. "We missed you."

And it turned out they had been watching him all along, waiting. When his body shook and his eyes streamed, and he just couldn't, they tended to him. These twin fighters, they loved and they forgave, and they made a family.

They offered him a place, not to watch but to be. Luke was the Jedi, and Leia was the Princess, and Han became the General.

He only told one lie after that, except to him it wasn't a lie. After the children were grown and his hair turned silver, somebody came to take their life stories.

Leia, ever his methodical Princess, sat reading over each of their entries, her legs slung over his lap. She found the lie. "How am I twenty-three years older than you?" she spoke suddenly. They weren't the same eyes he fell in love with, but he recognized that coal fire that kept him warm.

He grinned back at her. "That's the year you broke me out of carbonite. I couldn't see a damn thing, remember, but my eyes were open."

"Open to what?"

He shrugged, and felt bashful. "Best moment of my life."

She smiled at him. "You weren't exactly a newborn," she said.

"Just new and improved."

"You loved me."

He picked up her leg and brought her foot to his mouth, pretending to bite her big toe. "I don't know when I did, honestly," he told her. He set her foot back on his lap and rubbed the arch with both hands. "Maybe a while. I just didn't know it."

"So this," Leia tapped the data board where they biographical data was entered, "is the moment you let love in?"

Shy again, Han shrugged. "Sounds sappy when you say it like that. The moment I got brave."

Leia appraised him, a playful look on her face. "You look terrible for your age," she told him.

He laughed outright.